Imitation of Rigor : An Alternative History of Analytic Philosophy

Mark Wilson aims to reconnect analytic philosophy with the evolving practicalities within science from which many of its grander concerns originally sprang. He offers an alternative history of how the subject might have developed had the insights of its philosopher/scientist forebears not been cast aside in the vain pursuit of "ersatz rigor".

J.L. Austin has written of "the blinding veil of ease and obviousness that hides the mechanisms of the natural successful act". By revisiting a classic "small metaphysics" puzzle drawn from physics that launched a thousand ships of grander philosophizing, Imitation of Rigor employs recent insights into the architectures of effective reasoning as a means of explicating how Austin''s covert "mechanisms" operate in concrete terms. By these means, the book attempts to reconnect analytic philosophy with the evolving practicalities within science from which many of its grander concerns originally sprang. In doing so, it provides an "alternative history" of how the subject might have developed had the diagnostic insights of its philosopher/scientist forebears (e.g. Heinrich Hertz and Ernst Mach) not been cast aside in the vain pursuit of inappropriate standards of "ersatz rigor".